Review of Life (2017) by Bitmouse — 27 Jun 2017

I want to honor the work of many people with a review that is more than one word. However, the most honest review I can leave for this movie is, "meh.".

It has become an overly saccharine trend to pepper genre films with nods to previous popular films of said genre. Life starts with a number of dark, yet genre obvious, one line foreshadowings of things to come. This I knew meant I was either in for a well scripted ride or a plunge in to re-creation as opposed to genuine creation.

This film was plagued with poorly veiled failures on the part of its characters that led to *spoiler* an alien life form running rampant on the ISS. For an audience to willfully suspend its disbelief the illusion spun must be well thought through. There were a number of events that happened in Life that were simply silly, to say the least, that led to Calvin's eventual domination; the least of which is the crews apparent unwillingness to sacrifice itself to save all life on earth.

I imagine if an alien life form were to share the same airspace with the crew aboard a space station they would likely never return to earth until those on earth were able to study the life they had come in contact with and determine whether or not they were contaminated and thus safe or not to return. The fact that the crew, including the crew-member who's job it was to make sure that the alien lifeform stayed quarantined, acted as though there was a chance they would return once the alien had breached containment was too obvious a plot flaw to ignore. On the positive the creature was compelling and filmed in an ominous and intelligent manner. There were redeeming qualities to this film.

However, at the end I genuinely had to ask myself if I wanted those hours of my life back for other things. I have never asked myself that before, perhaps it is because it is so common a comment used in negative reviews. I do not want those hours back. However, I do want films to be better made.

If I were so lucky to have someone involved in this film read my review I would simply ask that they not underestimate the intelligence of their audience and consult on ever major plot point they incorporate into their film. If an alien breaches containment in a film which paints itself in steal blue tones of international scientific collaboration that breaking of containment must be worth of said tones.